We all have needs. What I need at the moment is a garage sale.

Rather, I need a garage (or at least a lawn), so I can have a garage sale.

I've been tidying again. I have Stuff. Stuff that other people would, I'm sure, love to have. I have unused scrapbooks, unused photo albums, and books (not that many that I'm willing to part with*). I have excitingly shaped wooden gadgets for walls and closets. I have pillows, bedding, picture frames, DVDs, cooking pans, and the myriad of other types of debris consequent of the Consumerism Lifestyle.

How can I have so much Stuff when I cleaned out in April and have been under a shopping moratorium ever since?

I have a friend. This friend has a lawn. This lawn has been offered to me for garage sale purposes. If I were the type to take advantage of a friend's over-generosity, I'd even now be phoning my ad into the newspaper and making up signs and price tags.

I have Mom's Stuff as well, of course. Most of it's not really garage sale fodder, but some of it is. About 20 pieces of stained glass. Some 70s and 80s era, mass-produced jewelry. Old (1900's - 1970's) postcards (not the ones that were written on and posted--those were passed to a family member who might be expected to care), old (Timex) watches, etc., etc., etc.

Actually, it's possible that most of this stuff is garage-saleable. With what I've heard about Hummels being hard to sell these days, the possibility of being able to sell even a dozen or two of them at $30 or $40 doesn't sound that bad. (It's all very well to say that "book" value is $225, but things are only really worth what someone will pay for them.)

The only things I'd reserve (from a garage sale) would be the antique pocket watches, some older jewelry that might be of actual value, the coins (that I'm still wanting to take to an expert for valuing because they're so interesting), and a handful of other oddball items.

The most annoying magazine in the world? The prize goes to National Geographic. I've bought three in the last year. Two still infest my apartment.

There's something just wrong about a magazine too beautiful and interesting to be tossed out, but not re-readable enough to be worth giving shelf space. I mean, it's targeted to the masses, what with the retouched photos and simple descriptive text. And yet, the presentation is just gorgeous. I see why every garage sale in the USofA has a stack of past NG issues for sale.**

Mostly I don't buy magazines because there's not enough real content to be worth the cover price. Any magazine that takes less than an hour to read is a waste of time. Few magazines, other than NG, pass that test. (And most of them I'm not interested in.)

And magazines aren't usually re-readable. I can spend $10 on a paperback book and read it fifteen times. I've run across very few magazines in my life that I cared to look at more than once.

The R.C. had to make a trip to Goodwill this morning. She's done a bit of clearing out of her own. Also, yesterday, I tackled the Cookbook Shelf. It's a mystery to me why two women whose interest in cooking stops at the microwave door (and rare forays into the excitement of tossing four ingredients into a pan on the stovetop) should own 20 cookbooks. (Hey! Those could have gone into a garage sale!) I managed to weed us down to five or six (most of which have "sentimental" value). Astoundingly, that took about four hours.

I've closed up the last three boxes of Stuff to be sent to family members and addressed them. They're waiting to be taken to the post office. I closed up the smaller box of things we're going to put into storage here, because we're not quite sure what else to do with them.

I desperately need a garage sale.

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* Okay. So not true. I have books on my shelves that I've been holding onto tenderly, in memory of the enjoyment I had in reading them Once Upon A Time. It's time to get rid of those.

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** Since I've bought three in the last year, it did occur to me that I could subscribe for a year (for $15) and be 'way ahead of the game for the next 12 months (since the price is $6.95/issue on the newsstand), but then I'd have twelve issues I was reluctant to toss out.